Over the weekend I reconnected with a group of amazing friends whom I hadn’t seen in a few months.

One of them is on a hugely inspiring personal journey to climb Mt Everest in 2015. She just spent 25 days training in the mountains of India, learning how to trudge through shin-deep snow despite exhaustion, build tents during blinding snowstorms in spite of terror, and generally do the impossible through sheer will power and determination.

Will power of steel aside, her commitment really humbles me… She’s at the beginning of a long, 5-year journey towards reaching her goal. I haven’t even stayed in a job for that long before!

It started me thinking about how seriously I take my commitments in life. It’s easy to say you want to do/have/become something one day, but not so easy to train at it regularly for the next five years of your life to accomplish it!

So far, the two new things I’ve taken on are pole dancing and blogging. Both of them are vehicles of self-expression in different ways. It’s only been a few months for both, and I’ve already gotten frustrated, questioned why I’m even doing all this in the first place, and felt like giving up.

I must admit, after hearing my friend share about near-death experiences and how there were times she broke down along the way, everything I’m dealing with in life seemed pretty small and unremarkable in comparison!

But then I realized that you don’t always have to climb Mt Everest to challenge the boundaries of whats possible for you. Sometimes it’s the little things that are the hardest to accomplish, and they can also redefine you. Little actions can slowly add up, small changes can lead to big ones, and habits can turn into entire lifestyles.

For the first ever, I just completed nine consecutive days of working out, practicing either pole dance or yoga.

It’s nothing significant in the grand scheme of life, and certainly no big deal to a lot of people, but it’s a big step forward from the very sedentary person that I’ve always been. It’s also the first time I’ve inspired my husband to up his own game as well.

Hearing our other friends in the group that I caught up with this weekend share their own lives was equally uplifting. Their adventures range from volunteering with HIV patients, to balancing MBA’s with new homes, and dealing with delicate family relationships in new ways.

So I guess all of us have our own version of Mt Everest to climb. It could be a passion, a person or a problem, something that challenges us so far out of our comfort zones that we might love it, even hate it, and know we need it to grow into a bigger person, all at the same time.